1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a memory card connector, particular to a low profile memory card connector.
2. The Prior Art
Memory card connectors are popularly used in the recent computer industry. An earlier conventional memory card connector design is shown in FIG. 1, in which a relatively large space is required for inserting the bent conductive contacts 40, 41 into the mother board 60. A solution is proposed to solve the above-mentioned problem, in which the conductive contacts of the memory card connector are soldered to a horizontal or vertical daughter board and then connected to the mother board. In the arrangement of connecting with a horizontal daughter board, a board-to-board connector is provided on the horizontal daughter board for mounting onto a mating board-to-board connector provided on the mother board. This horizontal arrangement takes up a relatively large space and thus is not suitable for limited area requirement for a portable computer. In the arrangement of connecting with a vertical daughter board, contact pads (so called "gold fingers") are provided on the vertical daughter board for directly inserting into a card edge connector provided on the mother board. In this vertical arrangement, although the width is reduced, the height is increased; in addition, standoff means is provided on the bottom of the memory card connector for meeting the height requirement of the card edge connector. Therefore, in this vertical arrangement, the height is too large to meet the height requirement of a portable computer of a reduced size and the material cost is increased.
A number of above-mentioned memory card connector and the related techniques can be found, for example, in Taiwan Patent Application Nos. 80207449, 81216447, 82205600, 83202199, 83107162, 83208140, and U.S. patent Ser. Nos. 4,818,239, 4,878,856, 4,810,203, 5,085,590, 5,149,276, 5,176,523, 5,286,207, 5,290,174, 5,324,204 and 5,334,046.
Moreover, the conventional memory card connectors are usually mounted on a front surface of the mother board, which involves increased processes to move the components of the mother board associated to the standoffs of the memory card connector to the rear surface of the mother board if there is such need for the memory card connector.
Hence, there is a need for a memory card connector which overcomes the above-mentioned defects of existing memory card connectors.